HDR Photography
We were in Traverse City, Michigan, during last year’s Fourth of July celebrations. Fireworks over the Grand Traverse Bay have some added drama, but the area is so far north (and west in its time zone) that the sky still hadn’t fully darkened.
After the main show has finished, private citizens produce their own displays up and down the beach.
A full-scale fireworks display is usually “far away”—over a park or a body of water, perhaps. When St. Lawrence University puts on a fireworks show for graduation, however, the fireworks are right on campus. Imagine watching that show from your dorm-room window!
Fireworks are lovely displays of chemistry and physics in action on their own, of course, but there’s an extra dimension of enjoyment from being part of a crowd and feeling the shared excitement.
I’ve developed some odd tradition for epic landscape photography at the end of major holidays (as in this Christmas image)—perhaps it’s something about wanting the day to last forever.
A poster of Caspar David Friedrich’s “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” hung above my bed in college, and I’ve since then developed a love of Rückenfiguren in images. Building from my last post’s theme of self-portraiture, I thought using myself as the POV for an image in Stone Valley might add the right German Romantic vibe.
Earlier this week, I posted an image that used long exposure to contrast textures in a landscape. This image achieves a similar goal, but perhaps with even more drama and structure. The oblique lighting from the blue-hour sky exaggerates the sheets of stone that have been thrust forth from the Earth.
This is one of those images that’s definitely worth clicking through to view at full size. The rough surfaces of rocks, moss, and pine needles contrast so effectively with the smooth, graceful textures of the waterfall.
This view of Coit Tower and the western span of the Bay Bridge brought to you by the oddness of San Francisco zoning and real estate that prevent view-blocking high-rise construction. (Whether that’s a good thing is another question…)
Even without a full array of ancillary pillows, a spot to lounge by the pool on a cool desert evening seems like an enormous upgrade over the second half of winter in Northern New York.
Magenta-and-cyan “vaporwave” aesthetics go well with an Indio hot tub.
Whether it’s a hot desert afternoon or a cool desert night, the best seat by the pool appears to be the seat in the pool.
Thanksgiving in Palm Springs has 100% more hot tub than might otherwise be expected. Can you spot Hazel the dog, on guard for coyotes?
The route over the mountains between San Diego and Palm Springs, CA 74, leads down this incredible twisting spiral of two-lane blacktop. Far in the distance, the twinkling lights of the desert valley await night travelers.
A moment in time, glowing through the fog: lights from the old (now dismantled) and new (still under construction, at the time) eastern spans of the San Francisco—Oakland Bay Bridge.
The lines and lights of the dock, boat, and horizon collide in this image of a catamaran in Traverse City.
Decaseconds 